


Pinion

by Dragonsquill (dragonsquill)



Series: Series (Thorki One Shots) [2]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers - Freeform, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Canon-Typical Violence, Drama & Romance, M/M, Partial Mind Control, Wingfic, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 03:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18984370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonsquill/pseuds/Dragonsquill
Summary: In Asgard, wings are more than convenience.  They are a symbol on an individual's self - and a boost to each person's power.  Earning them means knowing who you are, and who you will be.Of course, Thor was unusually young when his wings appeared.Of course...Loki's never did.And what happens if everything you've learned about your past causes irrevocable change?





	Pinion

**Author's Note:**

> Canon divergence - I haven't seen IW or EG so they didn't happen the way the Russos said they did.

**ONE**

Thor, of course, earned his wings young.

Barely three hundred years old, Odin’s eldest was already a massive wall of muscle and confidence when the Allfather brought him into war under his command. Thor was armored and armed like a warrior well beyond his years, a true prince of Asgard at his father’s side. Before them, rebels of Álfheim, terrorists who burned down villages to prevent food from reaching the castle of Álfheim’s king, Odin’s vassal. 

Thor had faced small skirmishes on the outskirts of the Realms, but this was the first time he served in proper battle. “It’s time,” Odin had told him as squires buckled Thor into his armor. “You’re strong and your defenses are developed. You are young, but mature enough to trade observation for experience.” The All-Father granted his son a rare smile. “You are on your way to being a fine king, my boy.”

Thor didn’t quite miss the sharp intake of breath from the darkness beneath the trees, but he determined to pay it no mind. It wasn’t _his_ fault that his brother was slim, that no lightning danced at his fingertips. Loki’s magic took more training. He would find his realm. His time would come.

Thor’s time was now.

\------

The battle was projected to end quickly, but the rebel forces were larger than anticipated. One hundred members of the Aelvin king’s guard defected at the battle site, calling for autonomy. Well-armed and with professionals at the fore, the rebels presented a challenge. 

Thor’s heart pounded, his heavy waraxe slicing in steady arcs before him.

Delicate and new, innate lightning sparked at his fingertips and danced down the shaft to the blade. His horse reared and called a challenge, muscles tightening and releasing.

Thor laughed, a boom across the battlefield, and rushed into the fray. 

Small fights were about taking prisoners, protecting small villages. This was something different. This was putting a _stop_ to the rebels. 

They scattered before his axe, fell beneath his stallion’s iron-clad hooves, and fled at Thor’s approach. The young god leapt from his horse’s back, his axe swept, and the rebels fell at his feet.

His blood sang.

His mind went blank.

In that instant, there were no _people_ left on the field. Individuals, elves, disappeared. No people. Only _enemies_. Only _targets_.

The rush of blood through his heart thumped in Thor’s ears. Arterial blood flew in droplets from his blade, striking at his skin. And from his back-  
Wings. Broad, strong.

Red as new-spilt blood.

“Berserker!” the rebel soldiers screamed as the Crown Prince of Asgard’s wings unfurled to block the very sun. The light filtering through the feathers shone the color of life’s blood.

Electricity snapped along the pinions.

Thor heard his father’s laugh, the shout of approval as the Asgardians spread their wings, usually carefully guarded in battle, throughout the field in celebration, a riot of colors in honor of Thor. 

The rebels cowered, fell down before the sparking prince and the All-father. Odin’s wings were red as well, but dark, the ancient shade of old blood clotted on the skin. 

“Surrender!” Odin bellowed.

Thor grinned, lips and teeth red-stained. 

The rebels bowed, taking to their knees before the warrior-king and the newly winged Prince of Asgard. Some of them begged for mercy.

“Of course,” Odin said kindly, his hand on Thor’s shoulder. “After all, peace is all we truly desire.”

Thor’s wings caught the light and shone – wet with blood. Carnage lay around him. The color of wings, the color of life, the color of death.

\------

**TWO**

Loki never earned his wings.

1500 years old and standing at his mother’s side for his brother’s coronation and Loki had no wings. 

He should have known.

He should have known.

As if the way he looked – slender where his family was broad, dark where they were light – or the way Odin always preferred Thor weren’t enough evidence, the fact that he, despite immense power and an _innate ability to shapeshift_ hadn’t developed wings to enhance his abilities should have told him there was something _wrong_.

Perhaps it did, and he just refused to see it until the moment he stared into the All-Father’s eyes, his own hands blue, and half whispered, “ _What more than that?_ ”

A genius. A genius, but always a fool. 

_Because no matter how much you claimed to love me, you could never have a Frost Giant on the throne of Asgard!_

Wings were the sign of power in Asgard. And in Asgard, Loki was only a stolen monster.

When he fell, he wanted to die. He could. After all, Loki couldn’t fly. 

He had no wings.

What happened was so much worse.

\------

It isn’t that he wasn’t aware of each and every action in the Battle of New York. He remembered every instant. He was in control of his faculties. His mind was his own. 

He told himself this because to admit anything else would be to confess that he broke, that his brilliant mind snapped and was only patched together under the mad titan’s will. It would be to admit that his power and his intelligence were not enough.

Not enough, and all he had. No family. No brother. No people. Just himself, broken.

Thor found friends on Midgard; of course he did. Thor found friends everywhere, and each one became more important, given time, than the brother who followed ever at his heels. Their power was immense, nearly god-like, enough to challenge Asgard itself if they ever felt the need. 

Despite this, for most of the battle, they left Loki to Thor. 

They clashed above the city, Loki’s staff against Thor’s hammer. Loki had an advantage – he watched, and paid attention, and learned over the centuries. Thor had focused only on his own might and power. He didn’t know Loki’s moves as clearly as Loki knew Thor’s. 

Loki fought too well, and Thor-

Thor called him “brother” and begged him to come home. 

Sharp edges of the man he was ground against each other. Thanos. Loki. Thor. 

Loki mocked Thor, and Loki fought too well.

He would win. He would win, and Thanos would grow even greater in power.

Loki slid a blade between Thor’s ribs and snarled into those shocked blue eyes, “Sentiment. Is that why you’re too afraid to use your wings, son of Odin?” 

_Berserker_ their foes had screamed, and blood flew near-indiscriminately across the battlefield.

Thor cried out and curled in, his hand over his side. “I am not . . . that man . . . anymore.”

“What? A warrior? Willing to kill for your people?” Loki willed a change. It was difficult – his power to shapeshift had been softened in those years lost to the abyss, and to Thanos. He didn’t know why. To control him? Thoughts fractured in his mind and he couldn’t follow them to logical conclusions. His power was tempered, but not gone, and he willed what he had never earned – wings, wings of ice and glass that burst from his back in a surge of pain that was nothing compared to what he had come to know since his fall.

Nothing. 

“ _A king_?”

Feathers made of his own self crackled, and his skin froze from peach to blue. Cold poured from the constructs on his back – long lines and gears of ice, frost rising in the air. He rose before Thor as the very monster of their childhood – the Frost Giant, come to murder bad children in their beds.

“Fight me, Son of Odin!” Loki roared, and his wings sang at a pitch so high that Thor winced and wavered for a moment. _Bring out your wings, Thor,_ some small voice inside Loki begged. _You will not be stopped when you lose your reason._

Thor pulled his hand away. Blood dripped from his fingers. Anger sparked lightning at his fingertips. “Enough!” he roared, and there was the flicker of red, the spread of wings, the crimson sun.

“Berserker,” Loki whispered as the first blow landed and he was thrown through a window and slammed to the stone floor. 

The false wings smashed, slivers breaking apart and sliding across the ground, flying through the window, falling off the edge. Razor-sharp shards punched through leather and into the already ruined flesh of Loki’s back. Thor hit him again and again, using his fists instead of his hammer. His expression was wild, his eyes strangely unfocused. Loki bit his lip to keep from crying out. Blood dripped off his chin.

The staff flew from Loki’s fingers, hurtling the stone within out the window and over the ledge.

“No,” he whispered, and scrambled, blood pouring down his back, toward the edge-

Mjolnir slammed into his side and threw him over, ribs cracking, but he wasn’t dead.

Wasn’t defeated, not yet.

His bloodied fingers wrapped around the staff. He slammed into one of the sky riders.

Thor’s eyes met his, wild and blue. There were tears on his face. His wings turned the sun to scarlet.

Loki was alive.

He’d failed again.

**THREE**

Hela’s wings were the color of blood, like Thor’s or Odin's, though shot through with a sickly, gangrenous green.

Loki stared upward, seeing his brother pinned by Hela’s grasp, Odin’s daughter’s wings spread wide and glittering in the carnage of their once beautiful city. He froze, horrified – Thor wasn’t fighting back. 

“Fight,” he growled. His heart hurt. “Thor!”

Thor didn’t hear him. He couldn’t, not so far away. But he saw his father, and he heard Odin’s voice, saw Odin’s wings of old blood (secrets and lies and conquest) and his lightning came to him, engulfed him, threw Hela away and his body into the air. 

Loki’s lips curved into a dangerous smile, and magic flowed from his hands. Blades flew – moisture in the air reshaped into his familiar daggers, but the supply to form them of ice was endless here by the roiling waters. One, two, twenty, flashes of light that threw back the dead, toppling a few into the sea.

Thor landed and the bridge quaked with the power of it. Lightning tossed a hundred of the undead into the sea and thunder clapped so loud and so close that the great wolf screamed in the surf. 

Loki and the Valkyrie met Thor on the cracked bridge. “You’re late,” Thor said, but there was such affection in that voice, and such certainty that Loki _would_ come despite everything, that Loki’s hand reached out, his fingertips almost touching Thor’s jaw before jerking away.

His chest ached. His mind was so amazingly, blessedly, clear. So clever.

 _Still a fool_ , he thought, as he said only, “You’re missing an eye,” and swallowed back the dozens of words hidden in the remains of his tattered heart. 

The Valkyrie scolded them both – old enough to have the right. “Hit her with lightning” and “I already have!” they argued like the boys they once were, and she rolled her eyes impatiently.

“You must use your wings, brother,” Loki urged. “You need every ounce of power.”

Thor looked at him. There was no compromise in his glance. “I will not,” he said, needing Loki to understand. “I won’t become her.” They looked up as she took to the air. Light filtered through her wings in sickly waves of red and green. “We won’t defeat her by losing our senses.” He looked at Loki. “We are not like her, or Odin.”

_Please. Understand. I am not that man anymore. I don’t want to go back._

He thought of Loki among the shards of his false wings, blood pouring from his mouth as he _let_ Thor beat him in a Berserker rage.

“Never again.”

Loki scowled at him, but didn’t argue. Whatever he saw in Thor’s face, he knew it would be a waste of time. “Then what do you suggest?” he snapped.

The Valkyrie leapt forward. Her wings were white – of course, a true warrior maiden. Thor told Loki to go and awaken Surtur. 

“A bold move, brother. Even for me.”

They parted ways. 

They did not expect to live to see each other again. 

But fate had other ideas.

\-------

**FOUR**

There was a short time of peace, and in those blessed days, Thor and Loki found each other. 

Not enemies, but not quite friends. Not brothers or – yes, the word fell from Thor’s lips and Loki caught it with his own. Brothers. Lovers. 

Thor was king. Loki was . . . finding his place, fitted somehow to Thor’s side.

And then a billion souls died, and Thor’s mortal friends were forced to accept all the help they could, even if it meant allowing the war criminal Loki to join their fight. 

The battle raged long and hard. Even Thor and Loki felt exhaustion creeping up on them, settling into their muscles. Heroes were dying. 

“Kill him,” Loki said, proud and strong in his armor, his helmet cracked and one horn broken.

He was beautiful.

Thor’s chest gasped for air. “I can’t! I’ve tried!”

“Not enough.” Loki looked at him, reached out and didn’t pull away this time. His cool hands framed Thor’s face, and all the cowardice of his life was gone. “You need your wings, Thor.”

“I will be out of control.” Tears without shame, slipping down the left side of his face. “I might not stop at Thanos.”

Loki’s thumb slid across the tender skin under his eye and gathered the tears. They froze, salted, into the swirls of his thumbprint. “Then I will stop you.”

Thor’s throat clicked. “I just found you. I can’t ask you to take on that burden.”

Loki smiled. He looked, he felt, peaceful. For years he had been jealous. For years he had been terrified. Thanos-

He tilted Thor’s forehead down to touch his own. “You are a hero,” he said softly, their eyes closed. His breath was cool against Thor’s cheeks. “You are a hero, and my king. You ask nothing of me. I offer it freely.” His hands slid down to tighten on the sides of Thor’s neck. They pulled away enough for their eyes to meet. “Save us all,” Loki said evenly. “I trust you, even when you refuse to trust yourself. If you must be stopped, I shall do it. But you won’t. Not this time.” His smile was crooked and real. “You aren’t that man anymore.”

Thor kissed him. He drew Loki against his body and Loki’s nails dug into his shoulders and the world-

Kept turning. 

He stepped away, shifting Stormbreaker in his hand, and leapt into the air. 

Loki heard the gasps of their mortal allies as Thor’s wings burst from his back. Lightning crackled, the air turned white, and Thor moved with incredible, unnatural speed as he swung the mighty axe. Usually slow moving, in flight he became nearly a blur.

This time, he aimed for the head.

It landed hard enough to cause a tremor in the Earth, the head followed by gore and then the titan’s heavy body slamming to the ground. Years of war, ended in a moment.

Thor turned, and his great wings blocked the sun and filtered the rays with-

“Gold,” Loki whispered, slender hand over his mouth. Then he laughed, sharp-edged, a god of mischief. 

Thanos’ minions faltered and fell without their master’s control. Even Loki, free –was he, before now?-tripped as he stepped forward, still laughing. 

“What?” Thor growled, chest heaving, axe dripping blood. 

His eyes were steady.

“Your wings,” Loki said, stepping closer, ignoring the crashing chaos around them. The broad wings curved forward toward him, and he stepped into their embrace. “They’re gold.”

Thor’s gaze shifted to his wings.

They were gold, pattered with browns. The sunlight dazzled on flecks of true gold, metallic. “Impossible,” he breathed. 

“You did insist you aren’t that man anymore,” Loki said with a twist of a smile. No longer the son of Odin, following in his father’s footsteps, Thor had found himself.

Thor’s eye returned to Loki. There was blood in his beard and dirt on his cheeks, but his smile was radiant, and mildly sheepish. “I don’t even know what they mean,” he admitted.

Loki did. Instantly. “Protector,” he said as Thor’s rough hands cupped his face. “Not a boy in search of death, or the son of a king who built his kingdom through conquest, but a ruler who loves his people.”

“And you,” Thor murmured. Loki smiled, that little twist of a true smile. His skin flushed blue, blessedly cool against Thor’s fingertips. Golden light played across his face as he shed the last vestiges of Odin and Frigga’s ancient lies. Not Jotun, not truly, but not Asgardian either. Just Loki.

There was still work to be done. Billions of lives must be saved, somehow, among them the lives of their own people, lost to Thanos. Asgard must be built anew. There would be chaos no matter what path they took to set Thanos’ madness to rights.

Their lips met, briefly, smiles touching before they stepped away and turned to face Thor’s friends, Loki’s allies, their wondering faces all bathed in golden light.


End file.
